PVZ 3 looks to be pretty good, but...
I put a good couple of hours into playing the game where I got to the camp levels and it was pretty good. The fusion mechanic is a really good idea for a new game adding more complexity to it, but most of the actual gameplay was lacking.
The levels were very basic and very similar only allowing you to pick 5 plants, but effectively 4 because you need sunflower, and there only being 5 zombies/hazards this and the fact that some of the base plants are useless unless you fuse them, like chop choy, which is a problem with there being so many plants and not enough slots to use them with leading to you bringing the same 5 plants to nearly every level. This gets exponentially worse with the next problem being the leveling up system and getting the new plants.
The leveling up system made it so even if I wanted to use new plants I couldn't because they were not able to keep up with the stronger zombies leading to me never using them. I was forced to power level a couple of plants until I got them to level 9 where I was unable to get them higher because I was unable to get enough seed packets to level them up further because the resources you get don't scale over time with the player. This will lead to most players ending up leaving the game when they reach a wall that will take an unreasonable amount of time to overcome or spend a lot of money just to play the game which will diminish the depleting good will your fans have. This mechanic of the game is a part of another problem this game has which is having a lot of things to do in the game that don't add any inherent value to the gameplay.
A lot of the stuff in this demo that wasn't the actual gameplay just added a whole bunch of nothing. For example the character creator didn't add anything to the experience of the game, it just looked weird and out of place, it didn't even fit with the visual language of the game. Another thing is your house you can customize it to an extent but it adds almost nothing to the overall game. The pots in the house you can use to get seeds from is the only use it had but even then it added nothing to my experience of the game, it didn't even let me get any new plants. same with the leveling system it did nothing to enhance the gameplay and only took from the experience. Most of the things to interact with outside of the actual gameplay were half baked with nothing added to them speaking of half baked the sound design was completely off.
While playing the game the background music and even the sound effects were terrible. The sound effects were very cheap and did not fit the game. An example of that would be sunflowers. From every other game sunflower was characterized to be very whimsical and full of life but the sound effects for picking up sun were very boring and off sounding like you were picking up coins instead of sun. It's extended to the other characters as well. The sound effects sound like you are rubbing two Styrofoam cups together for many of the plants. This incongruent sound to visual language made everything feel cheap when usually PVZ games have a very good sound design. This also extends to the background music where it made the game feel like a bad mobile game instead of a PVZ game. and the background music didn't even fit the theme of the areas you were playing in. where in PVZ 2 the different worlds had its music fit the area you were in, ancient Egypt sounded like a PVZ game while sounding like Egypt and same goes for the other worlds. While on the topic of the overall presentation I should mention the visuals.
the overall visual language was completely off, mainly the town. While looking at the town it reminded me of those bad mobile games like Homescapes sloppily put together to minimize the budget of the game. and same goes with the player character he looks very out of place like a children's book character you would find in a bargain bin. Most of the plants designs were really good; it was distinct from the other games but still looked like a PVZ game. overall the game looked like it was made for very young kids when most of your core audience is 15-30 years old at this point who either played them when they first came out or played them growing up. Now I should give my suggestions on how I would fix the game.
The most important thing in a game is the game play, so that is the top priority. You should question why this is added to the game and how does this enhance the experience without degrading the core mechanics. I think PVZ 3 should be a paid game instead, be more like PC game that has a mobile port, of a free to play mobile game, so everything in the game you should be able to get without spending money, focus on making a good game instead of a money generator people will spend more money on a game if it is actually good. if it is absolutely necessary to make it a free to play game it should be made with the free to play players in mind, balance the game around the free to play experience, and spending money on the game should be to make it easier such as buying powerups in PVZ 2 to get through a level you are having a hard time on. The speed of the game is way too fast as well. You can get down three plants and then the first "wave" of zombies come out. slow the pace and make the gameplay more focused on how well you can plan your defenses instead of how fast you can react to what is happening on screen, make it more like the original PVZ. With this you add more powerful zombies that need planning for how you are going to deal with them and more plants you bring to each level adding more complexity to the levels. This would complement your fusion mechanic which takes time for you to prepare and allows for a wide range of ways you can go about doing each level. also have minigames like in the original PVZ to spice up the gameplay and remove some of the repetitiveness of the game currently. The levels should be more quality than quantity. get rid of the plant leveling system no one liked in PVZ 2 and it adds nothing to the game just makes you use the same plants the whole game and it gets repetitive. If the balancing is not good you will reach a wall in the progression where you need to spend a lot of time grinding seeds as well as killing the pacing. As mentioned earlier, I think everything you can get in the game you should be able to get free to play in a reasonable amount of time so obtaining plants should be unlocked by beating levels not by amount of seeds you have. The same should go for the fusions but you should start off with all of them or nearly all of them when you get the necessary plants. Next I would completely remove the player character and the base builder. When people play PVZ games they want to be playing the tower defense mode; they don't want to play mini games that are completely unrelated to the main game. focus all of your time and energy on improving the core gameplay. Next the sound and visuals should be improved. When I look at the game it should be easily recognizable as a PVZ game and the sound effects should be satisfying and fit the characters they are attached to like in PVZ Hero's, which I think has the best sound design of any game.
In conclusion what you have now is a strong foundation for this game, it has a good direction and I can't wait to see where this is taken, but this needs a lot more work and polish before this can even be considered a finished game.
